¶1And we're recording. What's up, Matthew? Good. Good. We were just chatting beforehand that um I haven't been doing a lot of YouTube stuff recently, but I have had a lot of like personal uh work related stuff that I'm all excited about.
¶2So, we don't need to bore the YouTube people with that, though. Um how uh the big news recently has been that your friend Joe Schmidt converted to Catholicism, right? I think that's what caused you to reach out for this conversation. Is that is that what we're going to mostly talk about? >> Yeah, no problem.
¶3So, just to summarize Joe's conversion, uh Joe was an atheist agnostic for like 10 years uh from like beginning of high school um till like two years ago. And he started becoming convinced more and more by some theistic arguments like the psychophysical harmony argument given by Brian Cutter and others and Dustin Kromit. Uh he also lost some of his objections to the fine-tuning argument he previously had. And so he thought that yeah the fine-tuning argument is a good argument after all. Uh plus the moral knowledge argument.
¶4And so he has these various lines of arguments for theism that he found really convincing. So it started uh for him leaning uh more towards theism. He was convinced like 60% if you put him if you do a Beijian analysis he was like at 60% so agnostic leaning towards theism. And what really started pushing him even more towards theism is the analysis of miracles. And so Cameron Bertudzi uh and some of his close friends like Calb Jackson started uh putting um under his face like uh miracles and demonic phenomenon.
¶5So exorcisms and Joe at first was like oh this is ridiculous. No one saying in his mind can believe such a thing. And so first of all he disregarded the evidence. And Cameron really pushed him like explain this. Explain this.
¶6Give me your naturalistic explanation. And at the beginning, Joe was trying to formulate some of these uh quote unquote naturalistic explanation to explain the demonic phenomena. But then um Cameron uh also brought up Zetune and Cal Jackson brought up Lur and some very specific healing miracles like Barbara Snyder um and uh other like Greg Spencer. And so these uh independence cumulative miracles made him like uneasy at the beginning and he was trying to find an explanation. Um and he uh during the like the last year or so he just like came upon so much so much independence miracle evidence.
¶7Um like I helped him with the eucharistic miracle stuff but then Ethan Muse came along and talked to him about Fatima and Padreio and the evidence for that. Ethan Muse has a great blog uh on Substract putting out the best evidence for Catholic miracles. And so Joe was trying to resist at first because um to quote him, he says, "I do I did not want Catholicism to be true." Uh so he was resisting because he had all these objections on hell, sexual ethics, the problem of evil. And so he he was resisting it. But then um like after seeing all of these cumulative case uh evidence from independent um miracles he uh ended up concluding that Catholicism was true.
¶8Uh but his heart wasn't ready yet. You know like the conversion aspect is not only purely intellectual it's it's the intellectual part for him. But then the the heart aspect came afterwards. And so he started reading lives of saints like St. Mario Geredi St.
¶9Maximleian Colby and others and uh he opened his hearts to uh the beauty of Catholicism uh um right after being convinced intellectually and he ended up converting on February the 7th. So I had been aware since March of his conversion but we all had to keep it secret and now it's finally public and Joe is about to release like in the upcoming days uh the 25-hour video uh explaining all of his reasons for his conversion. So he's going to divide up into three parts. First part will be arguments for theism. The second part will be the cumulative case for Catholic miracles and the third part will be answering objections against Catholicism.
¶10So um for the listeners definitely watch his uh video. He sent me the script. It's uh it's very good. So yeah. >> Yeah.
¶11I'm looking forward to his uh his long video. Um just while you were talking, I actually thought of two different questions that I have. So, I'm I'm behind on my reading. Um, the the most recent book, I just finished this one. It's about Our Lady of Guadalupe.
¶12Um, the author actually of this book, um, so there's two authors. There's Joseph and Mon'nique Gonzalez. Mon'nique Gonzalez reached out to me and said, "Please read my book. I think that you'd you." So, that's what I've been up to recently. But, I have a question for you about I guess two questions, things that Joe brought up.
¶13And you might not have the answers cuz you're not Joe and that's totally fine. Um, but I have you so I'll ask you. The first one has to do with uh the first thing that he brought up in the Matt Fat interview which is the psycho physical harmony argument. I'm not a philosopher. So my misunderstanding might just be the fact that I'm like too much of an engineer to like like properly understand philosophy.
¶14Um, and then the second question that I have is about and this I can reach out to Ethan for this question too. It's about Padre Pio. Um, but I have you so I'll ask. Um, so the first question is psycho. And again, if you don't have the answer, totally cool.
¶15It's just it's on my mind. Um, Joe's explaining how any human experience kind of could be the experience of just like I think he calls it like warm milk or something like that. Like as in your experiences don't need to be as vivid as they are. Um, but they are as vivid as they are and that's weird per the argument. Um, and like it's it's it's almost like a fine-tuning of the mental experience or something.
¶16I I guess m that's that's my non-f philosophers summary of the argument. And I guess where my misunderstanding or where my lack of understanding comes in is I guess two things. The first is how do we know that our all of our experiences aren't more or less just the feeling of warm milk? Um, as in like I don't know what I don't experience. Do you know what I mean?
¶17So maybe there are joys that I can experience that I haven't yet which would make all of my current joy feel like nothing in comparison. And I think I think Catholics broadly think that that is the case. Like the joy of heaven will make everything on earth kind of seem like nothing almost. But then also, what if there are things that could make me so angry that all of my current anger has felt like nothing? And what if there is sadness that would make all of my prior sadness kind of feel like nothing?
¶18So, I guess, how do I know that my current experiences aren't the feeling of warm milk? And then a second question, I guess, too, is aren't all of our experiences pretty much just the way that they are because of evolutionary processes? Like our brains evolved to give us the experiences that we did because the experiences that we have have brought us to the point in the evolutionary process where we are now. as in clearly there is some kind of evolutionary advantage to having as much emotion as we do now. Um, and not less because like maybe if if we didn't get sad when other people die, we might not like try to save each other when a when a predator is chasing us or something.
¶19I don't know, something like that. And that that seems to me to be like a pretty reasonable um way to understand why our experiences are the way they are, I guess. So, I don't know. Those were like two things and this is again this comes from somebody who doesn't understand the arguments in the slightest. Um so there there might be like that might be like a stupid question maybe I don't I don't really know.
¶20Um but yeah that was the whole first part of the pints with Aquinus interview I guess was talking about um psychophysical harmony and I guess I just don't understand it. So I'm I'm I'm curious. Do you know more about that than I do? So I actually just discovered the name uh psychophysical harmony when I heard Joe Schmidt talk about it. So apparently it's a recent argument for theism.
¶21So it's not like old arguments like the calam, the fine-tuning, the moral argument. It's something very recent uh that was developed by Brian Cutter and Dustin Kummit who are two uh brilliant philosophers of religion and it was published um like two or three years ago or so. And um um so I don't know the details of the argument, but it's just trying to explain the striking coordination or harmony between our conscious experiences, our beliefs and judgments, our bodily reactions and behavior and what's beneficial or harmful to us. And so uh they argue that uh the the striking harmony we find uh um like looking at these phenomenon is more probable given theism than given naturalism. So I haven't read their paper yet because I just heard about this argument.
¶22So perhaps I would advise the audience just to go look go look up Brian Cutter psychophysical harmony arguments and Joe will talk extensively about this arguments in his uh conversion video. So be sure to check that that video out. It's coming out today as we're recording this uh this interview. So since I haven't looked that much into the arguments um I don't know if I could explain it well or defend it well. So, um, yeah, because it's it's it's a new new argument.
¶23So, yeah, I would prefer not to speak too much about this one. >> Totally understood. And truthfully, my questions might not even like they might stem from a misunderstanding of what the argument is even trying to say. To be honest, this is not something that I'm familiar with either. I had heard about it like in passing before Joe's interview, but I hadn't really thought about it.
¶24And to be honest, this was the first time that I spent any time thinking about it. So, yeah. Um, I just figured I'd have you and I'd ask a question. I have another one, too, because Joe spent a while in his Pints interview talking about um, Padre Pio. Um, I read this book by this Italian historian.
¶25It's called Padre Pio um, Faith and Miracles in a Secular Age, something like that. Hold on. I think I actually have the book pulled up still. Um, yes. So, and then So, Oh, perfect.
¶26It's how fortuitous. I actually have the question that I have um pulled up. So that's on page 26. But so I started rereading this book because I read it years ago. So it's called Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age.
¶27Um by the Italian uh Sergio Luzato. He's a professor of history. Um and I remember reading this book and coming away thinking that I wasn't all that impressed with Padre Pio. Um, but obviously people like Ethan Muse and Cameron Bortusi and Joe Schmidt are impressed. So I started rereading the book cuz it's been years since I read it.
¶28Like three or four years since I read this book. Um, so I started rereading it. Um, I'm only in chapter 1, so maybe I need to be patient. Um, but right away in chapter one, the book points out that like when Padre Peio first got the stigmata, he's writing letters back and forth to his superior father, Agostino. Um, and he actually like plagiarized Gog Galani and Gemma Galani is this Italian mystic.
¶29Um, she died like maybe 10 years or so before Padre Pio wrote these letters. Um, and what's funny is so this author Luzato, he says that Padre Pio's behavior was disingenuous to say the least. Not only did his did the Capuchin Frier not tell his spiritual directors that the words he used to describe the mystical experiences were not his own, but to confuse matters further, he sought to make them believe that he didn't even possess GMO Galani's book. He wrote that I would like to read letters and ecstasies of Goggalani even though he's quoting it. So it's like what do you mean you would like to read it?
¶30Don't you know it? So, that's just in chapter one. And you might not know this, but I I went to go read Ethan's article because I had assumed that Ethan already like covered this in in the the big article. Um, and I didn't find it in there and I have not rewatched Cameron's video. So, I watched it once when it first came out and I haven't watched it again since.
¶31So, it's totally possible that Cameron talks about that in his video. Um, I don't remember it, but my memory is not all that good if I'm being honest. Do you know anything about that? Um, do you know if any apologists have responded to this? I'm sure they have.
¶32It's literally in the first chapter of this book. >> So, I think that Ethan probably has responses to this since he's done extensive work on Padre Pio and he knows the case uh in and out and um this specific aspect of Padre Pio's life, I haven't heard about it. uh but I mean even if we were to grant it I mean it still doesn't explain the numerous phenomenon that is attributed to Padre Pio. So the stigmatas for example, he was examined by lots and lots of doctors who could see the hand that was perforated. Like you could read letters by looking at the other side and he was looked at by even medical doctors that were very hostile towards him.
¶33Like the church investigate him in the beginning. Uh they were very hostile to Padre. They thought he could be a fraud. So he was investigated by his own um enemies. And yet uh they in 50 years because he had the stigmatas during 50 years from 1918 to 1968 and no one ever found any fraud during that time.
¶34Uh and uh they even like put him in a in a room without any possibility of him like perforating his own hands and even if he were trying to perforate his own hands he would have some putrifaction appearing and there was never any signs of putrifaction. uh there was um no signs of infections and what's incredible is that right after he died the moment he died he was t there was pictures taken of his body and all the stigmatas uh were closed there was no scars no scars of the stigmatas he had had for 50 years just after his death and we have like evidence from pictures of that his body was taken to pictures right after his death. So you have a stigmatis aspect, you also have the the striking amount of confessions he did during his life. So since he confessed like 15 to 19 hours a day, uh it's estimated that he confess confessed about um uh like 5 million people during his priestly ministry. So there's statistics on this 5 million people, millions of people during his ministry at least.
¶35And we have lots and lots of um penitants who uh like probably hundreds of written testimonies, published testimony that reporting reported that Padre Pio could uh read their souls and knew their sins beforehand before they even went to confess it to him. And so, um, the conspiracy you'd have to posit, um, to in order to think that all these hundreds of, uh, testimonies were, um, all trying to lie about Padre Peio being able to tell their sins beforehand is a huge conspiracy. Plus, you have the stigmata aspect. Plus, you have the odor of sanctity that came from Padre Peio when he came into rooms and that was uh smelled by lots of people around him. And the appearances and billocations of padios are also well documented.
¶36So you have these striking amounts of huge coincidence around this this saint uh during his life that is extremely impressive and it's very hard to give a naturalistic accounts to all these uh testimonies simultaneously and we have like pictures medical records on him. We even have like the the doctors took his temperature and the thermometer like exploded reached to 125 degrees which is like uh impossible right it's it beats the world record of the highest temperature ever recorded in a human body. So you have uh body temperatures that are uh physically impossible to explain by natural means and yeah uh lots of ther different thermometers were tested by different doctors. So again it's very very striking. Uh so I would encourage everyone to read uh Ethan Muse's uh article on Pyre Peio because he goes through the evidence in depth.
¶37He quotes from the original sources and he does very uh serious work on this. And so um actually what's um like the the last piece of evidence that made Joe converts was the Padre Peio case because uh he had a 4-hour phone call with Ethan Muse on this. Ethan Muse was just going through the evidence just like quoting him doctors and original documents and uh for four hours Joe tried to resist to give counterarguments and at the end he was like okay I I give up uh this was the last piece that made him convert. So um I really encouraged the audience just to go out uh go check Ethan's article on this. >> I have like a methodological question for you I guess.
¶38How important do you think that it is to actually give alternative explanations alternative explanations before we jump to uh like the supernatural um >> the supernatural explanation. >> So my methodology is like you have uh an alleged miracle case first. We need to start with natural explanation to try to explain the fact that we see through natural means because that's the most um most often times uh events in the world are explained through natural means. Uh but if all natural means have been excluded systematically and you exclude fraud, misidentification through extensive lines of arguments and that the coincidence uh are striking and convergence through independent pieces of evidence. Uh there becomes a point where um you got rationally in in order to explain the fact.
¶39You see uh you have to posit a supernatural explanation and then you have to ask uh well what does this supernatural explanation is trying to convey? Uh so for the Padraio case it's pretty clear that the stigmatas are a reference to Christ's crucifixion. Uh the fact that he can read into people's soul for confession seems to be a vindication of the Catholic sacraments of penance of confession. And so um yeah I think that's the the rational methodology. natural explanation first.
¶40And if no natural explanation can account for the facts we observe, then reason leads us to posit a supernatural explanation. >> How do you know when you've exhausted all of the natural possibilities versus like as in how do you know what you don't know yet? Do you know what I mean? Like how do you know that there isn't another natural explanation that you just haven't thought about yet? >> So, uh there's many ways to do that.
¶41You could uh actually do some like rigorous work on this through the law of non-contradiction. So um for example, just take the the resurrection. Um if you grant the historical facts for the empty tomb and the appearances, you can actually deduce from this an exhaustive list of possible explanations of the fact. For example, to explain the empty tomb, either uh the body of Jesus was uh taken away by friends of Jesus, by enemies of Jesus, by neutral parties, by animals or other natural explanations like tsunamis or I don't know just you can posit like every single natural explanation or even by aliens that was also proposed. So you you can actually posit an exhaustive list of u ways to explain away the empty tomb.
¶42You have to do the same thing for the appearances of Jesus. So either uh they uh lied or uh they were sincere but they were honestly mistaken. uh and if they were honestly mistaken perhaps they had either hallucinations or else they didn't have any hallucination and they really saw a physical body and either that physical body was Jesus or it was not Jesus if it was not Jesus then uh either it was an identical twin or it was not and so through the law of non-contradiction you can get branches of naturalistic theories that you can uh you can have an exhaustive list of naturalistic theories and you can know that these are the only poss possible explanations of the fact and then you just have to evaluate how probable these naturalistic explanations are. And so for many miracles um there's going to be three explanations possible. So either it's a miracle uh four actually either it's a miracle, either it's a legend, either it's uh not a legend but they lied so uh they intentionally deceived us or else uh there's uh they're honestly mistaken.
¶43it's misidentification or honestly mistaken. These are like the exhaustive possibilities. And so you got to look at these possibilities first and if they all fail uh then you can posit a miracle. And so I would say that's yeah well we've had extensive debates on eucharistic miracles. But I think there's decisive arguments against misidentification through looking at the the slide pictures and uh decisive arguments against fraud.
¶44But we're not going to do the whole debate again here. But for uh cases like Zetune uh for example, um well, it's obviously not uh all people lying uh pretending to see Mary. They're really convinced they're seeing Mary. So that leaves us with the possibility of misidentification or the possibility of a human fraud, someone trying to do to project a light on the top of the church. Um and Jimmy Akin goes through all these naturalistic explanation in his videos on Zetune.
¶45So there's not that many naturalistic explanation you can propose to explain away Z2 and I think um this can be exhaust you can do an exhaustive list of uh of explanations for such phenomenon and same thing for Fatima I mean I could give you an exhaustive list of possibilities for to explain away Fatima uh even taking uh like the the most uh crazy hypothesis like the alien hypothesis that was also proposed. Yeah, I've read um Dr. um Waqen Fernandez. Uh no, Dr. Wen.
¶46Oh, shoot. What's his name? I have the book right over there. But it's it's it's um it's called Heavenly Lights. It's the Fatima book uh with the aliens.
¶47It's so weird the similarities between Fatima and like the Randles Forest incident from the 1980s or whatever. um the Belgian wave of UFO sightings from like 1990 to 1991. And actually that's a good example. Let me ask you about so you I I assume that you don't know about the Belgian wave. Have you heard about the Belgian wave?
¶48So from I think it it took place over the course of like a couple months from like late 1990 into early 1991. Um there apparently appeared in the sky over Belgium. All of these strange objects. Um apparently thousands of people saw them and called into local radio stations and wrote letters to local radio stations. Like we have hundreds of letters and thousands of logged calls about these strange glowing objects um generally described as like shiny.
¶49Sometimes they would come in groups of like five or seven of them. Sometimes there was just one. And they would fly in patterns that aren't physically possible for airplanes to fly in. Like as in you could imagine that an airplane is really good at going in one direction like this, but an airplane isn't really good at doing this, stopping and then going backwards and then moving up and then moving down. And that's what these things were doing.
¶50Um, so we have like thousands of eyewitness testimonies. And of those thousands of eyewitness testimonies, hundreds of them wrote letters that we have and this only occurred uh 30 years ago or whatever. Well, I guess yeah, whatever. It was in 1990. Um, and like so I was reading about that in the UFO book and I'm like, "Wow, I don't know what to make of this." But my reaction is not to to go from, "Wow, I can't imagine thousands of people lying." Like the amount of um, like I'm not going to be a conspiracy theorist, right?
¶51I think that those thousands of Belgians in the 90s, I think that they were telling the truth. Um, but instead of saying, "Well, I guess it has to be some kind of, you know, alien or some other kind of crazy explan," I'm pretty okay being like, "Yeah, I don't know." And then leaving it there. Um, but I don't feel the need to posit an explanation that um, requires me to think that the laws of physics have been broken or something like that. I'm pretty comfortable with saying, "Yeah, man. Crazy stuff happens every day and I'm okay not understanding everything I guess like and what I mean by this is I'm not rushing to posit a supernatural or or maybe we don't want to call aliens supernatural but like ultra natural or something like that.
¶52Um I I'm pretty okay with just saying yeah I don't know. Um >> and I Yeah, go ahead. >> Yeah, I think in many cases um the reasonable reaction is I don't know. So like for this case since I haven't studied it and uh you're talking to me for it in the first time so I I haven't heard about it but um I think sometimes it's reasonable to say I don't know sometimes saying I don't know becomes unreasonable for example if it is established that uh the that there is real human blood and amocartic tissue that transformed on a ukarist after um very serious um scientific analysis If if that is established right conditional so if that is established then it would be irrational to say oh I don't know why h what happened I'm not going to posit a supernatural explanation that's uh to to account for why bread turned into suffering neocartic tissue that would be an irrational reaction to say I don't know given the context of what happened and you know in principle that no laws of physics can account for the fact you are observing so the criteria would be this when you know that in principle no laws of physics could possibly account of the the fact the evidence you are observing then uh and only then it's rational to posit a supernatural explanation. Um so for example we know by the laws of physics that it's not possible for um a land that is full of water because it had been raining in the morning uh to dry in like 10 minutes after the miracle of the sun happened or uh that people can look at the sun uh during like 10 minutes without burning their eyes.
¶53We know physically that's not possible and that requires an explanation. Um, as for the UFO stuff for that they saw in 1991, I don't know. Like maybe UFOs exist. I'm not close to that. I'm not uh ruling that out in principle.
¶54Um, so if if if you have like say you have like a thousand testimonies in New York City that saw like a big uh UFO spaceship crash and uh they saw it um and they did scientific tests on that. Well, um that would be good evidence for the existence of UFOs and I think it would be rational here for us to believe it to believe that UFOs do exist and not just to say, "Oh, I don't know." So sometimes saying, "I don't know," becomes unreasonable, right? Because we have sufficient evidence uh to know. Um so again, I haven't looked at your 1991 case. I don't know exactly what they described seeing in the sky.
¶55Um it's too bad that perhaps like we don't have any photo photographic evidence to what they saw. That would have been good so that we can analyze objectively what happened during the photos. For Zetune we do have photographic evidence of the apparition that was taken. And for Fatima also there's photographic evidence. Uh so it's always good to have testim like testimony is good but um it's always better if you have photographic evidence or things like that uh or medical documentation like in lords where you have x-rays done on sister Bernard Mario so that you have objective data to work on.
¶56So yeah that's just a remark. >> Yeah. Um >> um I find the world to be so full of things like this this Belgian wave that I was telling you about. Um the Randles forest incident occurred um I think it was before the Belgian wave. I think it was in the 80s.
¶57Um and it was in the United Kingdom. Um where there's this army base and this whole army base saw a UFO fly right over their head. um like to the point where we have a memo signed by the army commander where he's like sending people to go out into the forest to go look for it cuz apparently this thing like flew like right over the forest right outside the base. Um there's this is a very US one but there's uh so I live in a rural mountainous region of the United States called Appalachia. Um, and there's this like urban legend from Appalachia, um, Moth Man.
¶58Um, where, um, a lot of people here believe in this Moth Man who's like a man with glowing red eyes and giant wings and stuff. Um, and the Moth Man urban legend started because all of a sudden in the 1960s in rural West Virginia, people started reporting seeing this Moth Man. Um like they would just see him like on the side of the road at night and like they would try to get close to him and he would like fly away. Um and like all of a sudden all of these people across all these like little towns in rural West Virginia all started reporting seeing him. Um and then this bridge collapsed and everyone was like, "Oh, it was Moth Man." Like it's this whole it's this whole thing.
¶59Um but it's weird that all these different people would all report seeing a like a 7 foot tall bird man with glowing red eyes. Like really weird stuff. But again, I guess my whole thing is that I'm really really unwilling to grant alien like the UFO thing. I'm really unwilling to grant the Moth Man thing. Like I'm I'm I'm not particularly close to saying like yes, I think that there is a Mo Man, you know, I'm I'm much more happy to say I don't know.
¶60I imagine that it's a mixture of people being mistaken, people getting caught up in the moment. Um, like we know that humans report things that they don't actually remember seeing and stuff like that. Um, so I guess that's >> Is there Yeah. Is there any photographic or medical documentation for Moth Man or the aliens? >> Aliens?
¶61Yes. Oh my gosh, you should see some of the stuff for the aliens. Um, like we have photograph evidence. We have um military radar like that pings something here and then something here. And it's not physically possible for any man-made aircraft to travel from here to here that quickly.
¶62Like the the documentation for the UFO stuff is insane. I'm >> I'm closer on the UFO stuff than I am on a lot of not all but a lot of miracle stuff. But again, I'm I'm still not there. You know what I mean? Okay.
¶63So like from an evidential perspective, we have to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And so if there is incredible evidence for the UFOs like medical documentation, X-rays, photographic evidence, I mean, we have to conform our intellect to the fact. So if if you're right about that, if the evidence is so good as you seem to be saying, I haven't looked into it, but if you're tr if you're right about that, then yeah, I think it would be rational to believe that there are um unidentified object, UFOs or things like that that come from outer space. From a theistic perspective, it's not at all improbable that God created life um other like somewhere else in the universe. And Jimmy Akin has very very uh extensive videos on this on how UFOs are compatible with the Catholic faith.
¶64So I wouldn't exclude absolutely that explanation app priori. Uh I think we have to remain open to the evidence. I'm agnostic on the existence of UFOs since I I haven't dig uh deep into the evidence but I'm not close to it. Another explanation from the Catholic perspective or the Christian perspective would also be to be to say that they are supernatural phenomenon in the world that um that can be due to um fallen angels to the demonic uh uh affairs. So uh we would say demonic possession is the case but perhaps also some um uh weird forms of uh apparitions uh could also be be due to demonic influence.
¶65So that the the criteria for that would be to look at the fruits. Are the fruits good? Uh do they bear bear good fruits or bad fruits? So there would be there would have to be a moral analysis on what comes out of it. But um I I'm not saying that the moth man or the UFOs are like demonic phenomenon, right?
¶66Because I haven't studied the case and issue. But at least in principle, I cannot exclude this explanation or the real UFO explanation. I just think we have to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And if there's really good evidence for UFOs, uh, well, we have to believe it. >> And for the record, I agree that you should follow the evidence wherever the evidence leads.
¶67Like, no matter where it leads, even if it leads you to a place that like you really don't want the evidence to go, like, ooh, that Well, that stinks. But guess what? The evidence is what the evidence is, and who cares that you don't like it, you know? Um, >> that's the case of Joe Schmidt, >> right? Right.
¶68Um, and the the famous Ben Shapiro facts don't care about your feelings thing. um you know that I'm not saying I like Ben Shapiro but I'm saying you know that that is true you know um I when I left it's funny like I when I left Catholicism I didn't want it to be false like that was my whole life like I mean I got married in the church while I was leaving the church you know like I um I got married when I was 22 specifically to avoid like living in sin you know what I mean like I was like I left kicking and screaming to use the um but so it's funny like in a lot of ways my story is Joe's story just flipped on its head like the opposite you know >> you wanted wait uh you wanted Catholicism to be true um and now would you still uh say that you would prefer that Catholicism is true or that naturalism is true? >> Ooh, okay. So I was going to say no. I think that I prefer some kind of like liberal Christianity to be true where like everyone is saved or something.
¶69I think that would be my preferred but like versus naturalism. I guess it depends on what kind of Catholicism we're talking about because um if we believe so Ethan talks about this and and like Ethan's right about this like the feudess of the saved. Um, I don't know where you stand on the feud of the saved, but um, >> like if that is the case, like if Catholicism entails the feudess of the saved, then I I hope it's not true, cuz that's awful. Like, oh, like the vast majority, you know, but but if universalism, like if the kind of Bishop Robert Baron version of Catholicism is true, then I hope that that's true. You know what I mean?
¶70Does that I'm sorry for the bad answer, but I hope that makes sense. >> Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. So um I would say that lots of people leave Catholicism or do not want Catholicism to be true primarily based on the sexual ethics that the Catholic Church teaches and the problem of hell and the problem of evil or stuff like that. But lots of it is due to uh what the Catholic Church teaches in terms of morality and sin.
¶71And uh lots of people like in the Catholic perspective due to original sin uh want to continue uh sinning and so they do not want Catholicism to be true because they do not want to confirm their intellect and will to the teachings of the Catholic Church. And this explains why you could have a psychological barrier in uh becoming Catholic. And so Joe had this psychological barrier and he said in the interview, I did not want it to be true because that would entail such and such. And so I think that explains why lots of people don't want the evidence to be good in favor of Catholicism and so they're resisting the miraculous evidence. And then for Joe like he's he got so much bombarded by um miracle evidence that at the end he was like okay even though I don't want it to be true like intellectually I cannot not conclude that it's true.
¶72So I'm going to have to like face reality and confirm myself to it. And so yeah, I think that explains why lots of atheists, I'm not saying all, but lots of atheists do not want Christianity or Catholicism to be true and so close their eyes when looking at the evidence are not and are not perfectly unbiased when it comes to looking at the evidence. When it comes to the feudess of the saved, this is not Catholic doctrine. This is a majority opinion in the early church, the church fathers, theologians and doctors of the church up until the 18th century. But you even have very conservative theologians like Gary Gulagrange in the beginning of the 20th century who's a hyper neotomist.
¶73So very conservative and he's like okay uh we we we don't there's no revelation on this. It's a free theological opinion. And so uh he he didn't he did not hold like the majority is damned. So uh even conservative theologians agree that it you're not forced as a Catholic to hold that the majority will be damned. And there are arguments of both sides.
¶74I talked to on this in my book on hell, the arguments for and against the majority of the damned. And so I would say uh both bishop baron's hopeful universalist view that came from von maltazar. I don't think that's compatible with Catholic teaching and I have a whole chapter on that in my book because I think the magisterium teaches that there are at least some people in hell. Um but I don't think that Catholics have to hold the Masadamata view. And so I hold that we must hope that the majority is saved but live our life as if the minority is save is saved.
¶75So that's it's like Pascal's wager. You have to live as if the worst scenario is true so that you maximize your chance of salvation. So yeah, I take a moderate approach. I hope that the majority will be saved. >> Yeah.
¶76And I'm sure Bishop Robert Baron would agree with you. He would be like, "Oh yeah, I'm not saying that everyone is saved. I hope that I'm sure I don't know." know Bishop Robert Baron that well. But yeah, like what I did like so I got married when I was 22 so that I like cuz my whole story is that I was moving across the country for a job. Um and I I had been dating my wife for like 5 years at this point.
¶77Um and I wanted her to come with me but I didn't want to live in sin. So we got married with like a really short engagement when we were 22 specifically to avoid living in sin. So like, and this was like while I already had like one foot out the door. Um, so and and I didn't want to leave because like my entire social circle was Catholic. Like I wasn't friends with people who weren't Catholic, you know, like that was my whole life was Catholicism.
¶78Um, so and I kind of did the Pascal's wager thing of like, well, I'm just going to I'm going to get married anyway. Like even though I don't really think it's it's a sin to live in sin, I'm going to get married anyway. and I did. Um, so in a in a way my story and I I guess Joe's story are kind of like the same but mirrored, you know, like flipped. >> Yeah.
¶79Um, but now would you say that you would like Catholicism to be true? Even though Catholic teaching says there's at least some people in hell and all the sexual ethics like no contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, would you still like Catholicism to be true given such doctrines? >> Um, I guess at the end of the day, it really comes down to how many people are saved. Um, when I was Catholic, I did believe in the feudist of the saved. I think that that's the more Catholic position if I'm being honest.
¶80Like when you read the doctors of the church and when you read >> Yeah. >> like it's it's a really modernist thing to reject the feudist of the saved. Um so if I'm allowed to cheat and kind of pick like a wishy-washy novasordo modernist Catholicism, I want that to be true. >> So I it's not modernist or else Gary Bulagrange would be accused of being a modernist. I don't think you can >> Gary Lud was born in the was he born in the 1890s or something.
¶81>> Yeah. Yeah. But modernism as the Catholic Church teaches in St. Pius the 10th says that the definition of modernism is to hold that uh do the dogmas evolve and change in their meaning throughout time. So it's not modernism is not equivalent to being to living in the modern era.
¶82That's that's another term. Modernism is a theological term on how uh you how you say that revelation can change and evolve. So uh Gary Gulr was very anti-modernist like St. Pius the 10th. So the condemnation of modern modernism can be found in Pashendi the encyclical uh of Pope Pius the 10th.
¶83So it's it's not the same thing as being in the modern era. So it's not modernist to hold that to hope that the majority will be saved. So like there is um church fathers like the majority or the consensus of fathers hold that the majority is damned. Um but they did not teach it as a divinely revealed truth. They taught it uh they did not teach it they it was like a theological opinion.
¶84Uh they did not say it was divinely revealed and nowhere in church history did the magisterium come along and say you got to believe this. So the church always said it was up for theological debate. And um and also the feudist of the saved was influenced by a bad understanding of the dogma extra ecclesia sellers no salvation outside the Catholic Church which was understood to be taken into a very restrictive sense uh in the middle ages and since the 16th century and the discovery of the new world theologians started to have a more broader understanding of what it means to be united to the church and taking into account invincible ignorance. So this can have significant change on the minority or the majority of the of the saved. And so yeah, it's a it's not modernist to to hope that the majority uh will be saved.
¶85>> To hope being the key to >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And also in scripture uh Jesus says that a lot will be damned and few will be saved. But this needs to be interpreted. A lot does not necessarily mean the majority.
¶86For example, suppose a mother has 10 children and she has four children who die in a car accident. She could say, "Oh, I lost a lot of my children, so many of my children, and I only have a few left." But she has the majority left, six out of 10. So, so a lot does not necessarily mean the majority. And so, uh, lots of fathers said a lot. Uh, and Jesus says a lot, but a lot is not the majority.
¶87I mean even losing like 20% of his children could be a lot for God. So again uh there's a distinction between a lot and the majority and uh yeah the it's not a modernist to hope that the majority will be saved. >> Yeah. And I think I'd probably prefer like some kind of annihilationism to even 20% of us being tortured for eternity. >> Yeah.
¶88So um you know you you don't have to cons consider eternal conscious torment as perpetual physical torture for eternity. There are some theological possibilities to hold that even though the pain of damnation of separation from God is eternal. Your privation of the beatotific vision is eternal. The pain of the senses can diminish uh with time and so it can decrease. Uh so like suppose you get like 100 units of suffering the first year then 50 the second year then 25 the year after that then uh 12.5 the year after that and you divide by two each time you would have a a convergent series a total sum that would be finite of pain of the senses in hell uh even though hell is eternal.
¶89So you could actually have a finite amount of punishments in hell while being still eternally separated from God. That's compatible with Catholic teaching. >> Sure. I mean, it would still go on for eternity. And I think >> Yeah.
¶90You would be separated from God for eternity, but >> Yeah. And I'd prefer >> You wouldn't be >> Yeah. But it's not annihilationism because annihilationism >> Oh, no. No. I I'm saying I would prefer that.
¶91Like I'd prefer to not exist at the end of everything than to be in hell forever. Even if the amount of torment is finite, but the duration is infinite. I would prefer to to be annihilated. Um, and if we're talking about like even 20%, I think I'd prefer like some kind of naturalism or some kind of Christianity where annihilationism is true, which like a lot of some Protestants believe in that. I'd probably prefer that to Catholicism.
¶92Um, >> yeah. So, so, so, so yeah, just to end on that, uh, so you're granting that since you would prefer annihilationism to be true, you do not want any view of eternal conscious torment to be true. even if it's for like 20% of humanity. >> And so this means that you would prefer naturalism to be true over Catholicism. >> And so it seems that you're saying that you want Catholicism to be false given its teaching on hell and perhaps sexual ethics.
¶93And so perhaps this could be an explanation why uh when you look at the miraculous evidence you perhaps have like uh I'm not trying to do psycholog psychologize people but perhaps like um your mind doesn't wants the evidence to go in favor of Catholicism because then you would have to believe something that goes against your moral senses like on hell perhaps that's a possibility right and it was the case for Joe like Joe said in the interview I did not want it to be true I did not want hell to exist Uh, but at the end of the day, when I saw the evidence, I had to come up with that conclusion. So, yeah. >> Awesome, Matthew. Um, I do have to run. Um, thank you so much for for chatting with me this morning.
¶94Um, maybe tell the audience where everyone can find you. >> Yeah. Well, thanks Kevin for having me. It's always a pleasure to to discuss things with you. You're one of my favorite atheist online.
¶95So, not an atheist to talk to you. >> Yeah. Agnostic. So my favorite non Catholic or natural or agnostic online. So thanks for being here.
¶96And so if you guys want to learn more about me, uh I have a YouTube channel. It's mostly in French, but there are some videos in English called Matthew Lava, just my name. I have a substract uh with articles in English on Eucharistic miracles and other stuff. And uh and yeah, I'm a Catholic apologist in France and I'm trying to uh discuss these um wonderful issues with uh non-believers and peoples of other religions. So, it's always great to chat with you.
¶97>> Awesome. Thanks again, Matthew. Have a fantastic rest of your day and I will talk to you next time. >> Thank you, Kevin. Have a good day.
¶98>> You too. >> Bye, everyone. >> Bye.